


Be My Valentine?

by HesitateDisintegrate



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bubble Bath, Castiel/Dean Winchester First Kiss, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Getting Together, Human Castiel (Supernatural), Human Castiel in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Oblivious Dean Winchester, Pining Dean Winchester, Requited Unrequited Love, Unrequited Love, Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:08:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29454318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HesitateDisintegrate/pseuds/HesitateDisintegrate
Summary: It’s valentine’s day and although Cas is now human and has moved into the bunker, nothing has really changed between them. Seeing Sam and Eileen so happy together makes this day out of all the rest especially unbearable. Dean tries to escape his unrequited love by finding a hookup at the bar, but deep down he knows that the one he really wants is waiting for him at home.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 83





	Be My Valentine?

Dean woke, and the first thing he noticed was that the bunker was eerily quiet. The usual bustling sounds of Sam and Eileen going through their morning routine were absent. Cas, who was surprisingly clumsy in the kitchen, could not be heard. 

He tried to turn towards his bedroom door, but found he was completely tangled up in his blankets. What was more, he was grossly warm. The room was stuffy, the air heavy. 

He flung himself out of bed and didn’t even bother to put a robe on, just ran out in nothing but boxers. 

The hallways were empty, and the kitchen tidy. He felt his panic rise even further until he noticed a note folded neatly on the counter. 

_Went out for lunch. Pancakes in the oven._

It was signed with a simple S.W. and a flowy E, and seeing those letters made all the tension bleed out of him. Also, the pancake promise didn’t hurt. 

He creaked open the oven and found a cooled plate of heart shaped pancakes. He set them on the table with an amused smirk. He had completely forgotten that today was Valentine’s day. 

It was sweet, the thought of Sam and Eileen bumping around each other in the kitchen making breakfast, but it also lit a mild jealousy in him. He wondered where Cas had been at the time. Sleeping? Curled on the couch reading? Sitting in a chair watching them with that subtle smile of his playing across his face?

He drowned the pancakes in maple syrup, then covered the mess in whipped cream until the pancakes disappeared. 

He ate, thinking. 

Cas had been human for nearly a month now. At first, he thought things might change between them. He had hoped. 

It was a silly hope. 

Cas had bordered on frigid as an angel, and maybe that outlook softened a little when he became human, but Cas still hadn’t given any hints that he wanted the same thing Dean desperately longed for. The hollow ache in Dean’s chest seemed like it was here to stay. 

It didn’t help that Eileen had moved in and he frequently walked in on her and Sam, bundled under the same blanket and talking about future plans, or stumbling sleepily out of their bedroom for a morning cup of coffee with matching bedheads. He loved Eileen to bits, but it made no difference. It didn’t send Cas into his arms. 

Speaking of Cas, Dean wondered where the guy had gotten to. He rinsed his plate in the sink and headed back to his room to throw on some clothes. Somehow searching for the ex-angel in his underwear didn’t seem quite appropriate. Although, some part of Dean wondered if that would finally get a reaction out of him. 

He found Cas in the room he had claimed, a loose sprawl over his perfectly made bed. A bed that he now had to use nightly. There were so many things Cas had to adjust to so quickly, it was amazing he hadn’t had a breakdown yet. 

Dean cleared his throat from the doorway and Cas looked up from the book he was reading. Peter Pan. It seemed like he was always paging through something now. 

“Good morning Dean,” Cas said with a bright smile. That was another thing that had changed. His expressions were clear as day now, more varied than they had ever been. When Cas was an angel, he didn’t quite know how to maneuver his face to show what he was thinking. Now that he was human, he didn’t know how to shield his face to hide it. 

“Mor-“ Dean coughed. “Morning.” He hoped his blush didn’t show. The first words of the day were always rough as rocks for him. 

“Did you eat?” 

“Yes,” Cas answered simply. Dean nodded, satisfied. Cas sometimes forgot that he now had to feed his body. 

“Sam and Eileen went out.”

“Yeah I know, Sam said today was an important day for lovers.”

Dean snorted a little. Some things would _never_ change, and Cas’s awkward explanations of mundane things was one of them. 

“It’s called valentine’s day Cas. You’re supposed to get roses and chocolate and do something nice for your valentine.”

Cas tilted his head and Dean didn’t need an explanation to know which part he was confused about. 

“It’s the person you’re with. Dating or whatever.”

Cas hummed in understanding, then asked a question way out of left field, but what was new?

“So who is your valentine?”

Dean found out real quick that it was possible to choke on thin air. He spent an entire awkward minute trying to clear his throat, and what was worse, Cas didn’t move that entire time. When he finally gasped in a proper lungful and was able to breathe again, he realized he still needed to answer. But how can you answer a question like that when the only thing you want is lying casually in a bed, looking like sin itself in a soft cotton shirt and jeans. 

“I don’t have one.”

Cas tilted his head again. “Why not?”

It was Dean’s turn to shrug, because there’s no way in hell he’d admit his feelings to Cas like this. Not when Cas didn’t give a single hint of feeling the same way. 

“I’ll probably swing by a bar later and see if I can pick up any chicks.”

Okay, so that was definitely the dumbest thing that could have come out of his mouth. There was no way to take it back now though. 

Cas nodded like that sounded like a reasonable plan. The indifference stung more than Dean could have anticipated. He suddenly needed to just get out of the room before he dug a deeper grave. 

“I’ll leave you to your book then.”

“Sure Dean, whatever you’d like,” Cas answered mildly. Dean stepped out, shutting the door gently behind him. 

This _sucked._ He was usually so smooth when it came to romance. And here he was, telling has he was going to look for a hookup when that’s the last thing he wanted. 

Part of him understood why though. This wasn’t just a one night stand he was looking for, this was love. Real and searing. It caused him to make stupid, impulsive decisions, made him twist with worry, sometimes rage. 

It was a hollow feeling that made him sleep on only one side of the bed, made him scoot his chair unconsciously closer, made him leave the door open. 

But Cas never reciprocated. 

Sure, his touches lingered a little, his looks lingered a lot, but what did that amount to? It didn’t seem like enough to go on. Definitely not enough to make a clear move. 

He scrubbed a hand roughly over his face in frustration. Valentine’s day or not, he wouldn’t be getting anywhere with Cas today. The guy seemed content to read all day, and Dean refused to disturb him. 

He took a long hot shower, then for lack of better things to do, decided to go out. Sam and Eileen weren’t back yet, even though it was now nearing 4 in the afternoon. 

Dean drove around for a while, enjoying the way the snow blew across the road from the fields lining it. After a while, he pulled into a parking spot downtown, then wandered along the shops. It was still cold outside, but the bitter frosts of winter had eased somewhat. 

The sidewalks were fairly busy with couples walking hand in hand. Heads on shoulders, breaths mingling. Before Dean really thought about it, he ducked into a bar just to get away from it all. 

The bar too was surprisingly full, but of a different sort of people. A cluster of women decked out in red and pink giggled at him as he entered. He smiled but walked by them, stopping only once he reached the bar. 

“A beer please.”

The short stocky woman behind the bar distractedly uncapped a chilled bottle, slid it over, then turned her attention back to the conversation she was having with another customer. 

Dean took a slow drink and tried not to scrunch his face. The beer was weak and tasted more like a weak vinegar than real alcohol. 

“Hey hot stuff.”

Dean turned and found his face inches away from a pair of very pillowy, barely contained breasts. He eased back. 

“I’m Precious.”

“Yes I’m sure you are,” Dean answered, more from instinct than actual thought. The woman laughed, light and plastic before pulling a stool closer and sitting down. She hung dangerously off the stool, mostly draping herself on Dean. 

“What’s a face like that doing in a bar like this on a day like today?”

Dean shrugged and smiled, lips tight, and took another drink from his beer instead of answering. 

“We can fix that you know,” Precious said sweetly. She brushed a thick lock of hair over her shoulder and Dean caught a whiff of her perfume, something cloying and floral, much too strong. He wanted to cough but even he knew that would be rude. 

“Who is we?” He asked, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. 

Maybe some other time, he would be all over this girl, probably would have pulled some stupid line about hot coffee and already tasted her lip balm by now. But as it stood, he could only notice the differences. How her eyes were a deep brown instead of clear blue. How her curves were soft and giving instead of tightly muscled. 

“My friends over there think you’re cute,” she said with an obvious wink. Dean turned to look over his shoulder and indeed, the women were all looking their way, smiling and waving and giggling behind manicured hands. 

Dean didn’t quite know what to say to that, so he finished his beer instead. 

“Wanna come with us? We’ll make it worth your while,” Precious asked suggestively. 

Years ago, Dean might have died for a chance to leave with so many gorgeous women. Now, all he wanted was to get back home.

“Thanks for the offer, but I’ve gotta head out.”

Precious pouted, but leaned back to let Dean pass. The cool air outside was refreshing, and helped shake off some of his sad and lonely fog.

Back at the bunker, he waved past Sam and Eileen, who had returned and put on a rom com with subtitles. He headed straight for the biggest bathroom and turned on the bathtub tap to full blast. 

A bath was probably not the manliest thing to do, but screw it, it was valentine’s day and he was spending it alone with his unrequited crush. 

He squirted an obscene amount of bubble bath into the rushing water and watched in satisfaction as white foam covered the surface of the water. 

Once the tub was full, Dean stripped off his clothes and sunk into the heat with a groan. The men of letters weren’t big into interior design, but they sure knew how to make a bathtub. It was deep enough that the water covered his shoulders, long enough that he could stretch out his legs with room, and wide enough that he had to reach his arms out almost all the way before he touched the sides of the tub. 

“Oh. Sorry Dean.”

He looked up and was met with a pair of very flustered blue eyes. Cas had a towel wrapped like a skirt around his waist. He was standing in the doorway, beads of water making little paths down his chest. Dean’s breath caught in his throat, and it took him a of couple seconds to find his words.

“What are you doing Cas?”

“I-“ Cas started, then stopped. It was unlike him to stutter, but his eyes kept dipping to the place where Dean’s chest disappeared under the water and his blush was unmistakable. 

Cas cleared his throat and forced his eyes up to meet Dean’s. “I needed another towel. The shower sprayed onto the floor and there are none left in the other bathroom.”

Dean lifted a hand out of the suds and pointed to the cabinet under the sink where he knew there were more towels folded in a neat pile. 

Cas didn’t move. He licked his lips. 

“Was there something else?” Dean asked after a beat. He was acutely aware of how naked he was. How naked Cas probably was under the towel. 

Cas startled a little, as if he hadn’t noticed he had been staring. 

“I don’t-“

“You don’t…?” 

“What is the purpose of a bath?” Cas asked innocently. Dean snorted. This dude had the most random questions. 

“Whenever I’ve needed to clean my body, I’ve used the shower. A bath seems counterintuitive. Are you not simply sitting in dirty water?”

“Uhh,” Dean answered cleverly. Cas was serious. He seriously didn’t know. Had he never taken a bath before?

“A bath isn’t to get clean. It’s to relax.”

Another head tilt. 

“The water is warm, it feels nice. You don’t have to think about anything.”

Cas hummed, but it was only his _I half understand_ hum. 

Maybe it was the empty feeling in his chest, maybe it was because Cas was still standing there nearly goddamned naked, but Dean said the words he never thought he would find the courage to say. Not in this lifetime, nor the next. 

“Wanna join me?”

He felt the blush rise up on his cheeks, but he didn’t look away. He couldn’t, not now that he had put out such a loaded question. He needed to know Cas’s reaction, one way or another. 

Cas simply stared, then, without warning, he nodded and dropped his towel. 

Dean’s eyes widened like twin moons. Only an ex angel would be so at ease, completely unashamed in his skin. Or maybe he didn’t know that you normally wouldn’t show off your naked body in full light with no preamble. Then on the other hand, Dean had literally just invited him into the bath, so social norms were kinda already out the window. 

It was only a moment, but Dean knew he would forever be jerking off to images of that dark trail of hair, those rippling muscular thighs, that soft thick-

“Woah,” Dean said as Cas slid straight into the water, hands slipping on the smooth edges of the tub. Dean caught his arm before he went completely under, and held him steady until he rearranged himself, back against the other end of the tub, feet stretched beside Dean’s.

Cas sat stiffly in the foamy water, staring at Dean as if expecting some sort of cue. 

“Relax man,” Dean said after it became clear that Cas wouldn’t do so on his own. He let himself slide into the water another inch and leaned his head back against the edge of the tub, watching as Cas copied him. 

“This is…very nice,” Cas said after a few long minutes. His voice was like melted honey, thick and syrupy and slow. Dean hummed in agreement. Part of him had never felt so relaxed, the other part was running in circles screaming about how Cas was _naked_ in the _bath_ with him. 

This might have been the peak intimate gesture between any other two people, but Dean still felt like Cas didn’t quite understand the meaning of this, so he refused to do anything more than sit back and soak in Cas’s presence. 

If this was all he ever got, he would be more than satisfied. Dean had lived off scraps of Cas for so long that this felt like an entire feast. 

“Why did you not bring home a girl?” Cas asked, suddenly pulling Dean back through the slow fog of his thoughts and into reality. 

“From the bar,” Cas clarified unnecessarily. 

Dean licked his lips, unsure of how to answer. He couldn’t exactly tell his best friend that he wasn’t interested in anyone because he was already in love. Because he had the real thing at home already. 

Instead he shrugged, hoping he looked indifferent. “Didn’t see anything I liked.”

Cas’s face fell at that, which was completely not the reaction Dean wanted. 

“So if you had seen something you liked, you would have brought her home?”

There was an openness to the question, an unspoken hope that even Dean could see right through. His stomach swooped. 

“I would not have seen anything,” he said firmly, then emphasized it with a bump of his knee against Cas’s. The warm contact of so much skin lit his nerve endings on fire. 

Cas looked up at him and Dean felt like he could see right through him, read him all the way to his very soul. He hoped Cas would find what he was looking for there. 

Tentatively, so lightly Dean thought he might be imagining it, a hand settled over his shin. He shifted his leg, and now there was the definite pressure of a handprint curling towards his calf muscle. 

“Cas?” Dean croaked. He didn’t have enough brain cells left to worry about how rough his voice sounded. 

“I don’t have chocolate,” Cas interrupted. “Or roses.”

Dean was aware of every movement, every breath. Cas’s lips hung slightly parted. His eyes watched Dean with an intensity only he was capable of. 

When Dean didn’t move, Cas’s hand slid to his knee, then higher still to his thigh. Dean reached out under the water and grasped Cas’s wrist. He pulled his hand closer to rest on his chest, slowly, with Cas shuffling and sloshing the water to accommodate the movement. They ended up mostly on top of one another, which was more than okay with Dean. 

Cas was there, in his arms, miles and miles of naked skin against his own. He couldn’t breathe, but he was breathing too fast. His heart was skipping beats, but also fluttering out of his chest. His mouth was dry, his lips were wet. 

A thousand and one impossibilities led them to this moment. To Cas, hair dark and damp from his shower, lips chapped, pupils blown wide. 

Dean leaned forward more slowly than he ever had his entire life. He waited at each millimetre for Cas to pull back, to say no, but he never did. 

Their lips met like long lost lovers, tentative, uncertain if this was okay, then ravenous, suddenly unwilling to part for air or hellfire or anything in between. 

Cas was panting against him, moaning and gasping in a way that only someone who never had to learn to be quiet could do. Dean was impossibly turned on by it. He delighted in each sound he drew from the ex angel’s mouth. 

Cas’s hands were everywhere, mapping the planes of Dean’s body, every place that dipped and had changed since he had knit him back in hell. The scar over his shoulder, the new length to his hair, the tight bulge of his muscles, the hard line between his legs. 

Who knows how much time passed? Enough for the water to have cooled significantly. Cas pushed his hands into Dean’s chest and leaned up slightly, looking _ruined._

Dean tried to catch his breath. He started to say something, maybe a cheesy _happy valentine’s_ , maybe a teasing _do you like baths now_? But the words muffled into Cas’s lips, which had crashed into his once again. 

Nobody was complaining though.


End file.
